Losing Ben Stokes is not ideal - but in no way is it a season-ending blow for Rajasthan Royals

These were the exact words uttered by Scott Styris in ‘The Dugout’ when news broke out on Tuesday that Ben Stokes was going to miss the rest of IPL 2021 after breaking his finger. And Styris was far from being the only one who wrote off the Royals as soon as the news came out. Social media was filled with “RIP RR” posts and you could understand why. 

Losing Stokes is not ideal. You would never want to lose a world class player and that too someone of Stokes’ calibre. But in a weird sense, eliminating all intangibles - Stokes’s aura, his presence and most importantly his reputation - losing Ben Stokes the T20 cricketer is far from the worst accident that Rajasthan could have encountered. 

But none of this still changes the fact that, despite all the experience he has under his belt, Stokes the T20 opener is still a rookie learning his trade on the job. The all-rounder, at the end of the day, has only batted 10 times in the IPL at the top of the order, in which he has succeeded twice. And hence whilst, thanks to him inherently being a world-class batsman, Rajasthan might have backed him to fire up top this season, there is no real evidence - with a significant sample-size - that suggests that Stokes is a very good T20 opener, let alone that he would have let records tumble. 

This still does not take away the fact that losing Stokes will be a devastating blow to Rajasthan. But why the Royals are lucky - or, rather, blessed - is, because, of their four key overseas players for this season - Stokes, Morris, Archer and Buttler - it is Stokes who is the most ‘replaceable’ candidate. For two reasons. One, the franchise already have not one but two world class openers - or at least openers who are more proven and established than Stokes - who could directly fill in for the southpaw, and two, available in the market are top-order batsmen not just better than Stokes, but arguably than 99% of the openers in the entire league. 

The second, more funky yet equally effective, option would be to replace Stokes with fellow Englishman Liam Livingstone. Last month, Livingstone made his ODI debut batting at No.6 but it has really been at the top of the order in T20 cricket that the right-hander has made a name for himself. Since the start of 2018, Livingstone has scored a remarkable 1,736 runs in T20 leagues across the world as an opener, at an astonishing SR of 151.0, and he is also someone who can literally serve as a like-for-like replacement for Stokes, thanks to the part-time spin he bowls. In the last three years in T20 cricket, Livingstone has bowled an average of 2.47 overs per match - way more than Stokes’ figure of 1.77 in the IPL - and has scalped 39 wickets at an ER of 8.10.

But even taking his bowling completely out of the equation, there is a case to be made that, from what we have seen thus far, Livingstone can not just serve as a replacement for Stokes, but potentially even out-do the latter.

As the chart above illustrates, among T20 openers, since the start of 2018, only Phil Salt has scored at a quicker rate than Livingstone. What’s remarkable is Livingstone’s average of 32.15, which is not too far away from the likes of Finch, de Kock and Hales. Whether the right-hander would be able to replicate his showings in the BBL, PSL and the Vitality Blast in the IPL will be the question, but in his brief stint with RR in the 2019 season - 70 runs in 4 games @ average 23 and SR 146 - Livingstone did show that he will have no trouble bringing to the fore his fearless brand of cricket. 

Alex Hales, Devon Conway, Glenn Phillips, Martin Guptill, Matthew Wade, James Vince, Aaron Finch and Lendl Simmons all went unsold in the auction, in which there was little to no demand for opening batsmen. As the table below illustrates, five of the aforementioned names - Hales, Phillips, Vince and Simmons - are among 12 openers to both average more than 30 and strike over 135 in T20s since the start of 2019.

Conway is a name missing from the table above, but that’s because the Kiwi has batted across multiple positions. Eliminating the ‘opener’ criterion, no batsman in the last two years has averaged as much as Conway’s 66.94, and his runs have also come at a quite astonishing strike rate of 142.77.  Buying someone like a Conway would make the Rajasthan outfit all the more flexible as the New Zealander’s versatility means that RR could afford to open with Buttler without weakening the middle-order. 

The only real downside is that none of these names offer a seam-bowling option like Stokes does. But that really should not matter, for Stokes’ bowling returns across the past two seasons have been hideous. Since the start of 2019, Stokes has sent down 32.5 overs in the IPL and has leaked 355 runs at an ER of 10.81. Among bowlers who have bowled a minimum of 30 overs in the IPL in this time-frame, Stokes’ figures are conveniently the worst. So it could be said that, unintentionally, RR have dodged a bullet in the form of Ben Stokes’ bowling. 

To deduce Stokes the cricketer to just ‘an opener’ might be harsh, but since the start of last season, at least, Rajasthan have primarily looked at the Englishman not as an all-rounder, but just as someone who could provide impetus up the order. That he would have single-handedly won the franchise a bare minimum of 2 games this season, had he played, goes without saying, but Rajasthan must consider themselves lucky, for there are a plethora of other cricketers - both inside and outside their squad - who could potentially, at least with the bat, affect games of T20 cricket the same way Stokes can. Rajasthan Royals will be without the services of Ben Stokes for the rest of the season, but it is not the end of the world.